10 comments:

Great blog, it's my favorite from now on :-) . I'm brazilian and here it's rare to found a girl riding a bike daily. But i'll try to make a blog like yours, you inspired me. It's a wonderful idea, congratulations.

generally i love everything bike-related - our blogs, our rides, aesthetic, our way of life, our international community... but i am getting sick and tired of some of the uber-cool men in this community who think it's an opportunity to just be old-fashioned sexists. women are not 'girls'. and your site, which proclaims to be all about normalising cycling in urban environments, is largely a bunch of shots with young and attractive women only in certain poses as objects. it's tiring. stop it. it doesn't even add up to making cycling look ordinary. it just looks teenage. from a london cyclist, sarah.

Hi Sarah, i disagree. i'm going to show these pictures to my mother, sister, wome friends to show them that there is no reason to not use bike daily. They tell me that is dificult because women use different shoes, i don't know how to say in english "sapato de salto", pants jousts to the skin, skirts, they tell me thousands of excuses, and the pictures in this site show us that it's almost always possible to use bike as a vehicle for our transport. Sorry for my english, i don't have many time at the moment. from a rare brazilian cyclist, rafael

Thanks for commenting, sarah. You're always welcome to do so even if I think that you are far too judgemental and militant in your tone.But I wish you the best of luck finding other websites and blogs that appeal to YOUR aesthetic sense and YOUR pov.Many best regards,Mikael

Thanks to you, too rafafull. I'm pleased that the blog is inspirational to you.Basically our point is that if you don't see cyclists like these on your streets where you live, you don't have bicycle culture.But you can certainly work towards getting it.

Sarah - while criticism of "Girls" (vs. "women") might have a point, I think you're missing something when you say "young and attractive women only in certain poses as objects." Many of the cyclists may be young (it's hard to tell with a lot of the shots not showing faces) and certainly they are attractive; but I think that it's unfair to say they are objectified. If you read the descriptive comments with the pictures, they are not about the physical attributes of the cyclists, but more about their style choices and the aesthetics of color (and transportation choice) which reflect their personality and subjectivity (if somewhat more indirectly than an interview might).

That said, I can't imagine that there are no stylish and attractive "boys" (or men) cycling around Copenhagen - and I'm sure many of this blog's readers would enjoy seeing pictures of them as well.

Sarah, I have many female friends here in Copenhagen who love what we are doing with the blog. None have ever found it offensive or demeaning. However, an English female friend disagreed with our position.

Maybe it's a cultural thing.

Either way, we think the pictures speak for themselves. It's just one of the joys of living in this great city.

I like the site and think it is done very tastefully. I only wish we had so many riding bike in our community. Sorry Sarah, but men like to look at beautiful women. I believe most any woman can look beautiful if she wants to, and it has nothing to do with being sleezy. Thanks for the posts, and keep 'em coming.

I'm a female cyclist from London, and I cycle in heels without a helmet as well as fully sports cycle-geared out, depending on my mood, the weather and my destination. I find your blog inspiring because it reassures me of my right to be fabulous on a bike. And it is the authors right to determine the angle his/her blog takes and if this is stylish women on cool bikes then so be it. Any who want to see men on bikes, or unattractive women on bikes are free to take a camera out and please themselves. A blogger account is free to all.

This particular shot is so very very smoking hot.. wow. I will be showing your blog to any of my female friends who will check it out: more women (and men) on bikes means healthier, happier people and damnit, the U.S needs more of all that. I live just north of San Francisco, and the rare women I see on a bicycle is usually of the spandex crowd: I love it that your blog shows that's it's totally feasible to ride a bike and look fabulous at the same time. Keep up the great work!